Guest Blog – Stu Field, Director of Sport

It has been an amazing year of sport at Ipswich School and Ipswich Prep School. On the same day as Ipswich School Sports Day 2017, four of our pupils took part – with two winning gold medals in their events – at National Finals for the Prep Schools Athletics Championships.

Stu Field, Director of Sport at Ipswich School, writes here about this year’s Sports Day. You can see photos of the event here.

Without getting too soppy, I am a firm believer that school sport can be for everyone, at whatever level they want it to be at. In a world that is often divided into participation and performance, participants should be allowed to participate and performers, well, they will always find an opportunity to perform! ‘Sports Day’ is the best shop window to see how close to that ‘Utopia’ you are as a school and for me, today did not disappoint! How often can you go to an event and see 600+ people complete at least one lap of the track together, a pupil finish an 800m to rapturous applause from staff and peers and feel the pride of wearing that Rigaud jersey and contributing to their cause, photo finishes and sharing the spoils.

In the same afternoon we saw so many records tumble that we ran out of New Record Certificates. Watching a pupil soar over 1.78m to break the Jr boys high jump record, was a thing of beauty and another dismantling the Year 8 shot put record with a huge throw of 10.75m.

And so even the great can be pushed, and how they thrived. The back drop to this were the battles in skipping, stacking and wanging a wellie. Blue Riband events? No! But fiercely competitive, all the same.